WASHINGTON -- Controversy flared Thursday over a congressional report on cat-shooting experiments aimed at improving treatment for head wounds, with scientists calling the report flawed and animal rights activists saying it shows such tests should end.
From 1983 through November 1989, researchers at Louisiana State University in New Orleans used about 700 cats in work aimed at finding better ways of treating soldiers and other people with bullet wounds to the head.
The death rates among soldiers with head wounds from bullets or shrapnel remained essentially unchanged from World War II through Vietnam, with about 10 percent of patients dying from their wounds. About 16,000 Americans die annually from gunshot wounds to the brain.
Dr. Michael Carey, head of the LSU research and a former surgeon in Vietnam, said he is conducting the cat work because so little laboratory work has been done on brain wounds.
'If the biology of brain wounds is not known, how can treatments be designed, how can doctors save more lives?' Carey told a news conference hosted by LSU and the American Medical Association.
In the experiments, anesthestized cats were wounded in the brain with pellets about one-quarter the size of a BB gun pellet.
The wounded cats were kept alive from two hours to 60 days to allow researchers to study the mechanics of brain injury and to test drugs that may reduce such damage. So far, researchers have found that one drug, called GM-1 ganglioside, appears to reduce some of the brain damage in wounded cats.
Federal funding for the $2 million research project was frozen in November 1989 following claims by animal rights groups that the work was not adding to scientific knowledge on the treatment of brain wounds.
The Defense Appropriations Act of 1991 forbids the Army from releasing any money for the research until the investigation by the General Accounting Office was completed.
However, the GAO's report, released Dec. 14, made no recommendation whether the cat research should be allowed to continue. Instead, the investigative branch of Congress said it should be up to Defense Secretary Dick Cheney to decide if there are still enough merits to the project to allow it to proceed further.
A medical panel convened by the GAO concluded that the goals of the LSU research are valid.
'The panel strongly believes that progress in improving outcome of brain injury can be made through studies such as this one. The (cat) model was deemed to be unique and suitable for the investigations undertaken,' the report said.
Furthermore, the panel said it believes that the anesthesia was adequate to protect the cats from pain when the pellets were shot into their brains.
Carey and his LSU colleagues had no objections to that section of the report. However, they expressed dismay that they were not allowed to testify before the medical panel or show them their laboratory.
The researchers were most upset with the GAO's findings that were based on consultation with veterinary anesthesiologists.
The anesthesiologists said they doubted all the cats were adequately anesthetized, and also said the lack of detailed records suggested there were deficiencies in the animal's post-wounding care.
Questions were also raised about the number of cats used in research that did not result in usable data and the lack of different response to injuries of increasing severity.
The GAO also found that the Army did not adequately monitor the technical performance of the LSU contract.
Army and GAO officials could not be reached for comment Thursday.
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine said the GAO report shows that the cat experiments have been 'largely unproductive.'
Dr. Neal Barnard, head of the animal rights group, called on Cheney to 'pull the plug' on the cat experiments. 'We cannot recover the millions of dollars spent on this ugly experiment, nor can the animals be brought back to life,' Barnard said.
